Local tea party leader: End Occupy Charlottesville camp

A local tea party leader called Monday for the Charlottesville City Council to end to the Occupy Charlottesville camp in Lee Park, but councilors showed no signs of wanting to take action before the occupiers’ special-event permit expires on Thanksgiving.

Multiple occupiers also attended the meeting, and some stood to tell council members that the group is leaning toward staying put in the park.

Carole Thorpe, the chairwoman of the Jefferson Area Tea Party, voiced her concerns about the park becoming public safety hazard, citing a number of recent disturbances and arrests — most of which involved the homeless — as reason for the city to act.

“I ask you here this evening, with all respect to the occupiers and the homeless in the park who are concerned with public safety, how long are you going to wait to reinstate the curfew and end the encampment?” Thorpe said. “Will it take someone getting beaten, raped, burned, killed, or for someone to file a lawsuit, before you end what we feel should’ve never been started by allowing a nighttime occupation of Lee Park? During the day when people are leaving before curfew hours is one thing. Allowing them to stay at night to police themselves, which obviously they are incapable of doing, is unfortunate, and we think that should stop.”

Councilor Kristin Szakos responded by saying that many people share Thorpe’s concerns, but she sees the issue as a matter of free speech.

“I really do believe that it’s a First Amendment issue,” Szakos said. “And I think the First Amendment isn’t limited to certain times of the day.”

Mayor Dave Norris took exception with Szakos’s portrayal of the situation as a pure free speech issue, reiterating his view that if the occupiers want to stay past Thanksgiving, it would require a community discussion about turning a neighborhood park into a “24/7 free-speech zone.”

“That’s where I may disagree a little bit with those who say we should be able to stay in the park as long as we want,” Norris said. “We have time to have that conversation between now and Thanksgiving. We have time to work that out.”

Occupy Charlottesville, a local offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement that protests against economic inequality and corporate malfeasance, has been in Lee Park for three weeks, and some activists said they had been getting indirect messages that the City Council wants them out, which Szakos and Councilor David Brown denied.

Occupier Ed Zavada said the group has gotten a “backchannel request” to consider leaving the park due to concerns that the homeless won’t seek proper shelter as winter sets in.

Zavada said he feels the movement is doing some good in helping the homeless people who have joined the activists in the park.

“Camping out with them even for the very short time that I have, I’ve realized that the problems are very complicated,” Zavada said. “There’s a lot of substance abuse issues that make it very difficult to have many of them sort of get along with the rest of us.”

Zavada also spelled out why many occupiers’ feel the campout strategy is critical to the movement’s goals.

“It’s not easy to do one-liners about the complexities of international banking and finance. Our occupation is intended as a show of determination for getting out our message and our determination to see some change,” Zavada said. “And that’s one of the reasons why being an ongoing thing that goes overnight is important.”

The councilors discussed how the presence of Occupy Charlottesville could lead to changes in the way the city approaches the issue of homelessness, but came to no conclusions about immediate changes to the situation in Lee Park.

Occupier Evan Knappenberger, who helped negotiate the group’s permit, said he’s leaving town soon, but the majority of the Occupy Charlottesville activists don’t want to leave the park.

“There’s a couple of different schools of thought on that. Right now it seems that most people don't want to leave,” Knappenberger said. “So I ask you to please go gentle on them.”